


silence and patience, pining and anticipation

by nonbinarynino



Series: my LBSC fics! [2]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Endgame Luka Couffaine/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, F/M, Hiding, LBSC Sprint Fic, Oblivious Marinette Dupain-Cheng, Trapped In A Closet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:46:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26705452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonbinarynino/pseuds/nonbinarynino
Summary: “Marinette,” Luka says, eyes wide. “What are you doing out here? There’s no exit this way!"“I, uh, I, um,” Marinette replies.(For the LBSC prompt: "Do you ever just forget they’re Couffaines?  But then they do something like like this.")
Relationships: Luka Couffaine/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug
Series: my LBSC fics! [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1943359
Comments: 19
Kudos: 172
Collections: LBSCSprintFicChallenge





	silence and patience, pining and anticipation

**Author's Note:**

> write me on tumblr! sapphicmarinette

Marinette, funnily enough, had actually felt _prepared_ for today.

She had gotten out of bed thirty minutes earlier than usual, and for once, she'd had enough time before school to _sit down with her dad_ and drink some coffee. That had been almost revolutionary. She had even ended up sharing her biology notes with Alya, who had apparently stayed up all night watching Netflix with Nino. It was one of the only times that Alya wasn’t sharing _her_ notes with _Marinette,_ and to be on the other side of that felt amazing. She’d spent all morning thinking that whatever life gives her today, she’ll handle with grace.

She just hadn’t been prepared for this. Um, at all.

Once it became clear, as it always does eventually, that an akuma was attacking the school, she quickly found an excuse to leave her classmates. The hallway that she chooses, on the far side of the building, is usually empty in the afternoons, since most of the classes there randomly ended up in the morning this semester. She’d been planning to duck into the bathroom, transform, and then duck right back out, capturing the akuma before she had a chance to miss dinner.

She hadn’t expected to see Luka charging through the halls, headed in her direction. When he sees her, he stops, but he’d been going so fast that he fumbles a bit. He clearly hadn't been expecting to see anybody, or perhaps just not her. “Marinette,” he says, eyes wide. “What are you doing out here? There’s no exit this way!”

“I, uh, I, um,” she says, obviously _very_ eloquently. Luka tends to have that effect, but not in a way that's paralyzing. Luka is the opposite of paralyzing. “I figured I could hide out over here somewhere. Why are _you_ here? You don’t even _go_ here!”

“I was waiting for Juleka outside when the screaming started,” he explains, placing a hand on her shoulder now that he’s close enough. He seems genuinely nervous, in a way that he usually isn’t around akumas. Marinette wonders if it’s because she’s here, but then feels silly, because his _sister_ is here, too. “I… came to get her.”

“Oh my gosh, you waltzed into a _building full of screaming people,_ ” Marinette replies, but the disbelief disappears as quickly as it had come in the first place. “You know, sometimes it’s really easy to forget that you’re a Couffaine.”

He looks at her funny, as though he doesn’t know what that means. She supposes that makes sense. After all, he’s grown up in it his whole life. How could he? “You should come with me,” he says, looking at her with a ferocity that all the Couffaines seem to get. Marinette had seen it when Juleka had defended Rose from Chloe. “I can drop you off at the entrance on my way to get Juleka, and you can get the hell out of here. I promise that I won't be far behind.”

She would have been able to transform a lot faster if she hadn’t run into him, but now that she has, his plan seems to be her only choice. Hopefully it's not a complete shitshow outside. “Okay,” she agrees. “What class is she in this period? I can tell you how to get there.”

“Thanks,” he says, squeezing her shoulder for emphasis. Marinette looks at the wall so that he doesn’t see her blush. “I think she’s in- “

Before he can finish his sentence, screaming echoes through the hallway, followed by the sound of noisy, stomping footsteps. Marinette whirls around to see where it came from, and realizes that it had been where Luka had just been running to. _Thank the gods that he ran into me,_ she says, feeling such relief that it's almost out of place, given the circumstance. _He could’ve gotten hurt._

“Shoot, that's coming our way,” Luka says at the sound of the yelling, and immediately starts looking around for something. “Here!” He grabs Marinette’s hand and tugs her after him. For a moment, she’s confused about where they’re going, until she sees the door that he’s flinging open. It says _CONCIERGE_ in bright white letters, and she doesn’t need to be a genius to recognize that it’s probably not the biggest room in the world.

 _Oh, no,_ she thinks, but recognizes that it’s really the only option. There’s no way that they’d get to the end of the hallway in time, not with the akuma hot on their heels. She lets Luka tug her in, moving her foot so that he can close the door behind them.

Once they’re both fully in the janitor’s closet and the door is closed, there’s nothing to do but become acutely aware of how close they actually are. Marinette is standing with her back pressed against the wall, one of her feet wedged in between Luka’s and the wall, with her other foot pushing against the door. Her left leg is pressed closely to his right, and he must have nowhere to put his right hand, because it’s holding lightly onto her waist. Even in the pitch darkness, she’s close enough to see every curve and line of his face. He’s looking directly behind her, as if he’s too embarrassed to make eye contact. To be fair, so is she, because the second that he _does_ look at her, she shoots her eyes straight to the ground.

“I have to say,” Luka says, so close to her that she can smell the mint on his breath, “I definitely did not read the sign on the door.”

Marinette huffs the quietest laugh that she can. Who knows if this particular akuma has super hearing or not, and she definitely does not want to risk it. “It’s alright,” she assures him. “Our other choice was becoming loyal akuma minions.”

Luka’s grip on her tightens ever-so-slightly. “Every time an akuma strikes, I thank my lucky stars that you haven’t ended up one of their minions yet,” he says. “And then, I thank them again, because you’ve never been akumatized, either.”

“Everyone’s luck runs out eventually,” she replies, though it comes out darker than she had intended. Though, if anyone’s luck was to _not_ run out, it would surely be hers. The concept of her being akumatized... yeesh. Talk about nightmare fuel.

“Not if I can do anything about it,” he tells her, and there's a _conviction_ in his voice that she's never quite heard from him before. It almost seems like he's thought about it: how to keep her from getting akumatized. It makes her want to kiss him, but that's probably a bad idea, so she swallows, unwilling to unpack that, and does not reply. The akuma roars, so loudly that it surely must be within a few feet of the door. Marinette doesn't expect it, reaching out to Luka without thinking. Her hand curls into the neckline of his shirt. Neither of them say anything for a long time as the footsteps slowly sound out down the hall. In the silence, she hears a quiet, rhythmic thumping noise, but it takes her a while to realize what exactly it is.

“That’s your heartbeat,” she whispers, after what feels like forever has passed, and she’s hopeful that the akuma is gone. “I can hear it. I can feel it.”

“I bet the tempo’s pretty fast,” he says, and she can hear the smile in his voice without even looking at him. He smiles a lot. “After all, I’m stuck hip-to-hip with you.”

Marinette finally looks at him again, squinting as the dots connect in her brain. He’s looking at her, too, now, with that soft, doe-eyed look that he gets sometimes. “You’re flirting with me,” she realizes. _And, not only that, but you mean it, too._ That last part draws uncertainty straight out of her, and even though she is no longer scared to move, she doesn't drop her hand away. Instead, she slides it down and over so that she's fumbling with his shirt sleeves.

Luka blinks once, twice, three times. He looks like a loading screen, which is such a stupid simile that Marinette almost laughs out loud at her own internal joke. “Wait, you didn’t realize that until just _now_?”

The blush comes back with a vengeance, though Marinette tries to will it away before she finds out if he can see it in the dark. Luka's so sweet that she's not sure if he'd say anything about it, but sometimes he likes to tease her. “I don’t know what you mean,” she says, not embarrassed by any of her actions, but embarrassed by the way she feels like she's the last person in the room to understand the punchline. “After all, it’s not like you said it word-for-word.”

“I might as well have,” he replies, and even though it seems like he’s teasing her, there’s not a hint of malice in it. Sometimes, if she messes up enough times in a row, her parent's teasing will go from silly to _this is your final warning,_ (same with Alya, sometimes, if Marinette _really_ screws the pooch) but there's never any of that with Luka. She doesn't even know if he's capable of it, not with her. “I practically _confessed_ after Si-, well, you know.”

Marinette had certainly known that for what it was – a love confession. But the weeks had gone on, and Luka hadn't sought out her company any more than usual, so she'd let it go. She's trying to better about letting things go that aren't hers. Sometimes, it works. “That was a while ago, though,” she defends herself. “Usually when people are interested in me, it doesn’t last long, and you never said anything again, so…”

“I was giving you space,” Luka explains, all the teasing out of his voice now that he realizes what is going on. He's probably thinking about Adrien, but it goes so much deeper than that. It was Nino's one-day infatuation with her. It was Nathaniel, who liked her until she messed it up. It was the love letters that she'd found in her locker that ended up being a prank from Chloe. It's not that Marinette is never the object of romantic affection, because she _is,_ but it always ends up in the dust or a lie to begin with. “I – I still feel that way," he continues. "I still write songs about it.”

“Oh,” she replies. His hand hasn't moved from her waist, but suddenly, it feels so much warmer than it just had been. “I don’t write songs about you. I sew about you," she explains, hoping that he will understand the implications. After Silencer, there had been a few frantic, unfinished art pieces that never got far, because she'd always end up blushing and frazzled. They’d all been blue.

Luka doesn’t seem to know what to say to that, but after a few moments, he ends up chuckling. “I’d love to see what you sew about me sometime.”

Sudden courage shoots through Marinette’s system. If he's leading up to asking her out, she's going to beat him to the punch. “I’ll show them to you on Saturday,” she says, confident. “Over coffee, maybe? Or dinner?”

Luka takes so long to respond that the courage pours right back out of Marinette and onto the ground, like spilled milk. Eventually, he just says, “Sure. That sounds fun.”

(When he drops her off at the entrance, he says, “I’ll pick you up at seven!”)


End file.
